Whatever happened to ... ?

[Rick Ransom]

Whatever happened to the following people:

John Meyer of Turf Investment Society (T. I. S). He did a lot of work on pace methods in the 80's and disappeared.

William S. Brown of TRIAD. Did a lot of statistical studies on Southern California tracks in the 80's.

Dr. William L. Quirin. Famous for "Winning at the Races" and other publications. Disappeared from the handicapping world.

Stephen L. Brecher. Wrote the first book on computer handicapping, "Beating the Races with a Computer" in 1980 (now out of print and unavailable).

[Tim]

Rick,

That's spooky, I just spent the day going over, once again, Meyer's booklet "In the Stretch: Last Fraction Handicapping, The T.I.S. Way". What he wrote in 1982. It still feels fresh and logical.

I'm one who believes that the concepts of "velocity handicapping" flowed from Hugh Matheson to Huey Mahl (MPH) and John Meyer (FPS) and then out to the rest of us. I think that Meyer's 1981 work "The T.I.S. Pace Report" provided a foundation for many of pace theories that are popular today.

How about adding to the list Burton P. Fabricand, author of "Horse Sense, A Rigorous Application of Mathematical Methods to Successful Betting at the Track".

Tim

[Rick Ransom]

Tim,

Yeah, right on! I'm wondering what happened to Fabricand and "Horse Sense" too.

[Dave Schwartz]

Fabricand wrote a 2nd book... "The Science of Winning" in 1979. In that book he spoke as if there were hundreds (thousands?) of people using his system to make a living at the races.

I am not sure that the entire system wasn't a big con. After all, the system (aptly titled "The Principle of Maximum Confusion"), took about 4 or 5 minutes to handicap, but the catch was it had to be done with about 1 minute to post.

[MikeH]

Dr. Bill Quirin is a Mathematics Professor at Adelphi University: alelphi.com.

[Rick Ransom]

MikeH,

No more horse racing for Quirin?

Dave,

Fabricand had a stock market system based on surprise earnings that sounded pretty logical. The "principle of maximum confusion" was too maximally confusing to me to ever test it, but I don't think it would do as well today because it's another of those things that depends on favorites doing a lot better ROI-wise that other choices, and that's just not true any more. Scott's "ability times" that depended on betting on one of the top 3 choices is another one (don't know if that ever worked either).


Another guy that I wonder about is James Jasper, who wrote three books between 1979 and 1985 on sports betting and horse racing, including some early computer work done on an Apple computer in BASIC. I realize most of you have never heard of most of these guys, but I found all of them to have some very interesting ideas.

[Dave Schwartz]

Rick,

Actually, I have almost all the books mentioned, except the Meyer/Mathisson stuff. They were before my time, I think.

I have a friend that actually tried to write a Fabricand program. He was a professional level programmer. Quite good actually.

Anyway, he said that when you took the rules apart there were contradictions. He claimed that the rules simply did not mesh together. At one point had me looking at his code compared to the rules. I don't remember the specifics, but I do recall that he was right: The rules did not work.

That is why the book might have been one of the great cons of all time. Who could possibly test it?

Either way, Fabricand was the most brilliant of them all.

[Rick Ransom]

Dave,

That's not surprising. I couldn't figure them out. If I recall correctly, in the second book, "Science of Winning", he revised the rules to include early speed. I'm always suspicious when someone needs to keep changing the rules to make their method work on a new set of data.

[Tim]

I always wondered why when I applied his rules I eliminated every horse in every race. I thought at the time I wasn't smart enough to understand what Fabricand was saying. Maybe it was another "Dot System".

Tim

[Rick Ransom]

Tim,

I don't know if you remember it or not, but there was one system even worse than the "dot" system. It was advertised by Mickey Rooney and consisted of a pair of dice. I can't remember what they called it. I guess it would be better than chance if you happened to be playing at a track that favored the 7 post position though, since that's the most likely number to be rolled with two dice.

[MikeH]

Rick -

I don't want to be spreading rumors here, but I heard that Dr. Quirin was not treated well by someone (or "someones") in the Horseracing industry, he became disenfranchised, and went on to other things...

[Lefty]

Rick, I remember the Mickey Rooney Dice. I was putting
out a newsletter similar to PRN and purchased it for review. When I opened package I fell on the floor I
laughed so hard. It cost $10 bucks. Mick also endorsed
the Dot system. Sad, isn't it?

[Dave Schwartz]

MikeH,

LOL - I Know that story well, having heard it directly from the horse's mouth (as they say) in March, 1990. And, while I will not spread it either, I thought it was not a well-known fact.

At the time I had just met (by phone) Dr. Quirin (who I might add was always an honorable gentleman). We had made a deal to include his par times in my first program, ThoroBrain.

Suddenly, about 10 days from release, he demanded that I not include his pars. He refused, at the time, to give me any explanation, but eventually explained it to me (to some degree).

I went on to purchase every set of pars I could locate at the time and create them froma conglomeration of these times. I was astounded to find that the great majority of the pars were simply copies of his own work. (There was an error in Dr. Quirin's pars which he shared with me and you could always tell the plaigerized copies because they contained the same error.)

Eventually I built my own pars from scratch and went on fine, but that is another story.

In my opinion, racing missed out when Bill Quirin left.

[Rick Ransom]

Lefty,

I wonder whatever happened to .... Never mind, I don't want to know.

[Tom]

Anyone remeber the "Alphabet" system?
I think they used to talk about it in the NY Post.
Had someting to do with the old OTB letter for the horse.
Tom

[eetrain]

this is my first post, so i apologize if this note gets mangled as it moves from my computer to the message board.

i lived in nyc for a number of years and through an odd set of circumstances did some research for dr. quirin. he relayed to me his reasons for getting out of racing and you all seem to have hit it right on the head.

dr. quirin was, as someone mentioned, a real gentleman, but after that bad experience, he turned his attention to the one thing that is almost as challenging as horse racing: golf. but he was not only playing, he was writing histories and the like.

-e

[witchdoctor]

While we are on the subject of whatever happened to someone. What happened with Ron Ambrose?

[BMeadow]

Re Ron Ambrose, we did a very long article on him in the February 1999 issue of Meadow's Racing Monthly. He left Las Vegas under a cloud of debt and eventually wound up in Laughlin hotels, playing the races.

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